Part A.
1. Company Analysis
Overview of Tesla’s Home Industry.
Tesla’s home market is mainly North America, and precisely Canada and the US. This is an American power train designer, developer, and manufacturer. The head of the company, Elon Musk, started it in 2003. Tesla has two primary sources of revenue, which are the design and development and auto sales. Tesla has continuously improved its position in the market and ultimately becoming a market leader in the North American electric auto industry. Tesla has grown its reputation on the market through the continuous design of exemplary autos. The sale of cars is made through its network of retailers around North America. For the whole year 2019, Tesla reported gross revenues of $24.57 billion. As of April 2020, the company had a market capitalization worth $88 (Mehta, & Bhavani, 2018). Despite the high demand for its electric vehicles, and the rapid expansion. This is because most of the company revenues go to infrastructure evident the construction of the Gigafactory in Nevada.
At the home market, Tesla has a large number of competitors, and amongst the many in North America, Ford and Honda are currently the most formidable. The home market has quite intense competition, but Tesla has differentiated itself through the manufacture of high-end and self-driving autos. Tesla also seeks to distinguish itself from the contenders through the design and manufacture of EV sport autos. Tesla is also involved in providing a series of automotive services such as design. As such, the company sells the battery technology, which it is the most significant designer and seller currently. Even when Tesla has strived to differentiate itself from other automakers, the traditional car manufactures also seek to increase its offering of hybrid and pure electric vehicles. In North America, brands such as Nissan Leaf offer customers a more affordable option of electric cars (Gautam, Verma, & Srivastava, 2019). However, Tesla has distinguished itself from the competition through exemplary design and next-level performance.
Existing internationalization strategy
Tesla Inc. was formerly known as Tesla motors due to its specialization in the manufacture of electric motors. The automaker is based in Palo Alto, California. The business model of Tesla involves the design and manufacture of electric vehicles, electric car parts, and the electric vehicle powertrain. Although Martin Eberhard cofounded tesla, the company is managed by the CEO, Elon musk owning 22.25% of the company as of 2017 (Lu, 2020, January). Tesla has a growing number of customers who enthusiastically support through marketing and purchase of its products and services. However, customers might perceive the products of tesla as a bit expensive. The price tag of the company is dominated by the Tesla Model S priced at $76,000. Model X on the other hand is priced at $82,000 (Tesla, 2019). The most affordable model of Tesla goes for $35,000. Most of these vehicles are affordable to most of the middle class people. However, it is critical to note that Tesla currently exhibits a higher risk when it comes to the pricing of its goods and services.
The mission of Tesla is to accelerate the transition of the world through the building of sustainable energy. The master plan is to design and manufacture zero-emission electric vehicles. The profits will be used to create and make even more affordable electric vehicles for families. The pricing strategy of Tesla therefore, is skimming. The same approach is used when entering the overseas markets as per Cedric (2018). Initially, the company began the auto industry by manufacturing high end cars. With the profits generated from the sales of the current models, Tesla seeks to enter into the Chinese electric auto industry. The move to enter into the Chinese auto industry is motivated by the vast marketing and rising rates of incomes in the country. Entering into China takes an array of internationalization models, but Tesla’s primary strategy is foreign direct investment.
Tesla has had a successful management of the supply chain as a strategic tool geared towards becoming a leader in the electric car industry. The supply chain strategies are blatantly based on the need to bring to the market holistic and environmental friendly autos. Apart from this, the endeavor to ensure quality deigns has put tesla in the position to manufacture most of its parts in-house. As a result, the major car batteries are manufactured in house and this allows it to better manage the supply chain and have a control of its production (Bilbeisi, & Kesse, 2017). The ability of tesla to manage its supply chain is evident by the fact that it experiences a moderately low bargaining power of the suppliers. As a result of the resource advantage, tesla has managed to expand and become the leading electric car maker in USA.
Evidently, the success of tesla comes from an invention of the new way of making autos and a high investment in R&D. the endeavor is to make cars at lower costs, invent edge cutting car technologies and endow it quite a dominant position in the world auto industry.
VRIO Analysis of Tesla.
Tesla has strategically located stores. This is a competitive advantage as compared to other contenders. With the stores, Tesla can reach out to a large customer base and then head over to know their unique needs. Tesla also comes up with futuristic designs. Each new product is design in a way that allows Tesla to make significant and minor revamps in the future. This bails the company out of the need to invest vast resources in developing new auto and battery designs. Tesla also gains a competitive advantage from the proprietary battery. The unique design of the battery will endow Tesla in a dominant position in the electric car industry globally. The vast supercharge network both at home and overseas makes Tesla the best option for customers out there. When making a purchase, Okada, Tamaki, & Managi (2019) state that customers consider the presence of charging locations before they can head over to purchase a specific brand.
2. Industry Analysis
Porter’s Five forces Analysis of the American Industry.
Threat of new entry
The threat of new entrants in the electric car auto industry is low. This is because entrants need to make a huge investments in infrastructure and technology. Apart from this, Tesla sells the battery and auto designs, making it almost the dominant player. In the bid to discourage entry, Tesla can lower the prices of electric autos since it is a market leader. The firm can also discourage new entrants by providing its customers with a unique value proposition. In line with this, Tesla needs to ensure innovation by delivering new products and services. Not only can the firm bring new customers, but it could also give hem reasons to buy its products through unique values. Tesla can also build economies of scale to lower the fixed cost per unit. More funds can also be invested in research and development to differentiate the products and bring about changes. New entrants are less likely to enter dynamic markets.
Supplier bargaining power.
Supplier bargaining power is low. Most of the companies in the North American auto market buy their materials and car parts from an array of suppliers. Tesla manufactures most of its batteries in-house and designs its autos in-house as well. Tesla is also a significant buyer of car parts, and this is because it manufactures unique automobiles. Parts bought from the suppliers are minimal, and this means that the overall impact from the suppliers is low. To gain an edge over the suppliers, Tesla needs to build an efficient supply chain and get multiple suppliers. The firm can also experiment with product designs made from the different materials so that if prices rise in one material, the firm can shift to the other. Tesla also needs to develop dedicated suppliers who depend primarily on Tesla for the market for its auto parts. As such, third party suppliers will have less bargaining power over the suppliers.
Buyer bargaining power.
The buyer bargaining power is high. Buyers of autos often demand significant reductions in prices, offers, coupons, and deals. Customers in North America always want to but the best available offering by making payment of the minimum possible prices. Such a scenario has placed Tesla under the pressure of low-profit margins in the long run. The customer base of Tesla is not as big as contenders such as Toyota, Ford, Chevrolet, and Hyundai. The customers heaved a higher bargaining power, meaning that they have a higher ability to seek discounts and offers from goods and services of the company. Tesla’s focus in the home market is diversification of products to build a vast customer base. This will reduce the overall bargaining power of the buyers, and provides an opportunity to streamline its sales and the process of production.
Threats of substitute autos.
Tesla offers a unique brand, meaning that the threat from substitution in the home market is high. There are many car manufacturers that sell fuel-powered autos at a much-subsidized price as compared to Tesla. For this reason, the threat of substitution is high because Tesla offers a value proposition that is almost uniquely different as compared to the offerings of the industry in its entirety. Tesla needs to focus on the service orientation of its company rather than just focusing on the product. Tesla also needs to understand the customer needs rather than the general product. These and other strategies will also increase the switching costs of the customers in the long run.
Competitive rivalry.
The competitive rivalry is low in North America. Tesla has set itself apart from contenders through its edge-cutting technologies in the design of the cars. The ability of the contenders to drive prices down is low. Other manufacturers such as Toyota and ford do not have significant market share in the electric car industry. As such, the competition does not take a toll on the profitability of the company in the long term. Tesla can further set itself apart from the competition by building a sustainable differentiation and building economies of scale. Strategic alliances will also ensure the growth of the company market size as compared to just competing for small markets (Cavusgil, 2016).
Industry development in the home country
The government of United States has had quite a significant impact of tesla and the entire auto industry in general. Tesla’s opportunity comes from the goals of the government when it comes to reducing the emission in the few coming years. Tesla’s opportunity comes from the long term goal of the government to reduce emission levels. The new international trade agreements support tesla’s entry into overseas markets as well.
The economic factors affecting the success of tesla includes the economic conditions, levels of trade, national income and currency changes. The decreased cost of materials for batteries have been key in influencing the success of reducing the cost of production throughout the country Van den Steen, (2015). With such advantages, tesla has met its cost leadership strategy on which it bases its pricing strategy.
Most people are accepting the use of cleaner electric cars especially in the primary tesla markets in North America and even Europe. The customers of tesla perceive it as a luxury car and this means that more people are willing to pay even the seemingly high prices of tesla products. People also buy Tesla cars because they are generally cleaner and do not come with high costs of fueling and maintenance.
Tesla’s success in the US has been partly due to the technological innovation in the country. The company took advantage of this to get to the forefront of innovation in the auto industry. Tesla has benefited from the rising rates of automation in USA and the increase use of mobile services at the country. Tesla has the ability to adapt quickly and ensure a flexible production and manufacturing because of its high use of technology in manufacturing.